COLEMAN FOUND GUILTY, FACES DEATH PENALTY

Howard Witt, Chicago TribuneCHICAGO TRIBUNE

Alton Coleman, the beguiling ninth-grade dropout linked to eight murders committed during a Midwest crime spree last summer, was convicted Wednesday of the aggravated murder of a 44-year-old woman and could face the electric chair.

His professed common-law wife and accomplice, Debra Brown, was convicted of the murder by a separate jury Tuesday, but escaped the possibility of the death penalty because jurors found her innocent of any aggravating

circumstances in the slaying.

Coleman`s jurors needed only 3 1/2 hours to find the Waukegan, Ill., native guilty of two separate counts of aggravated murder, one count of attempted aggravated murder, and one count each of aggravated robbery and aggravated burglary in connection with the July 13, 1984, attack on Marlene and Harry Walters of suburban Norwood.

In addition, the jury opened the way for Coleman to be sentenced to death by determining that he was guilty of four ''specifications,'' or aggravating circumstances. The jury found that Coleman acted with ''prior calculation and design'' and that he committed the murder ''as part of a purposeful attempt to kill two or more persons.''

Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Richard Niehaus set a sentencing hearing for Friday, after which the jury, still sequestered, will be asked to recommend Coleman`s punishment.

Coleman, ebullient Tuesday when asked his reaction to news that Brown had escaped death, was considerably quieter in the wake of his own sentence.

Coleman fidgeted before the verdicts were read and stared balefully at each of the jurors as they confirmed their verdicts aloud. He declined any comment as he was led shackled from the courtroom, surrounded by nearly a dozen sheriff`s deputies.

On Monday, Coleman, acting as his own lawyer, orchestrated a startling courtroom scene as he led Brown into confused and contradictory claims that she had murdered Mrs. Walters, 44, while Coleman was elsewhere. Brown, once described by the FBI as Coleman`s ''slave,'' had declined to cooperate with her own defense attorneys and did not testify in her own behalf.

Mrs. Walters` murder was the first for which Coleman, 29, and Brown, 22, have been tried. She was found bound and gagged in the basement of her home, struck up to 25 times in the head with a blunt object, which prosecutors said was either a crowbar or a vise grip pliers.

Her husband Harry, 46, found handcuffed lying next to her, suffered severe skull and brain injuries in the attack but survived. He testified during the separate trials for Coleman and Brown that Coleman struck him in the head with a four-foot wooden candlestick holder.

Reaction in the Walters family to Coleman`s verdict was ''relief that it`s almost over,'' said son Daniel Walters, 26. But he added that the family had been very disappointed by the verdict in Brown`s trial that spared her from death.

Coleman`s verdict ''at least makes us feel good that something will be done about'' the attack on his parents, Daniel Walters said.

Neither prosecutors nor Coleman`s two court-appointed defense attorneys, who had to endure Coleman`s outbursts that they be fired and his insistence that he be allowed to act as cocounsel, would comment on the verdict until after sentencing is completed.

But Hamilton County Assistant Prosecutor Claude Crowe, who led the case against Brown, said Wednesday he was crushed that Brown will not be executed. Prosecutors in both Coleman`s and Brown`s trials had argued that the pair were equal and active participants in the attack on the Walterses.

''I went home last night, had a few drinks, tried to forget about (the verdict) but couldn`t,'' Crowe said.

One juror in Brown`s case, meanwhile, told the Cincinnati Post that Brown escaped the possibility of death because jurors misunderstood the meaning of aggravating circumstances.

''To tell you the truth, we goofed,'' juror Hobert Wilson told the newspaper.

Brown`s jury took more than 16 hours over two days to reach its verdict, emerging three times to ask Judge Fred Cartolano for clarification of the law. Brown now faces a minimum punishment of 20 years to life for the murder when she is sentenced by Cartolano in two weeks.

Brown`s jury had been sequestered for deliberations when Brown took the stand in Coleman`s trial to claim Coleman never went down to the basement and had nothing to do with the murder.

Coleman and Brown, who witnesses said often posed as destitute newlyweds to gain their victims` confidence, pleaded guilty last fall to kidnaping a Kentucky college professor, who was found unharmed, locked in the trunk of his car in a Dayton park. The couple received 20-year federal sentences for that crime.

Those guilty pleas were offered in a legal maneuver designed to postpone the imposition of any death sentences the couple might receive. But whether the federal sentences must be served before any subsequent death sentences can be imposed remains an unanswered legal question.